Both games have a sprawling endgame, of which I enjoy both. I feel like there is more variety in Path of Exile, but both have their own quirks.

In Diablo 3, the chase is clearly on Legendary items, while the endgame in Path of Exile is focused around obtaining maps. Both games benefit from having seasons with objectives.

In Diablo 3, the seasons contain 9 tiers of challenges to accomplish which scale to different difficulties. Rewards from completing the 8th tier of challenges are a stash tab, and the first 4 tiers reward give you a set of armour which gives you a massive bonus to certain skills.

In Path of Exile, there are 40 challenges each season to complete. This season I’ve completed the most I’ve ever completed, having completed 17 challenges. At 12, 24 and 36 completions you are rewarded with an aesthetic item for your character. These are exclusive to completion of challenges, as a lot of the aesthetics in the game are obtained through micro-transactions.

So, in Diablo 3, the challenges really are focussed on grinding to be able to obtain items to reach the highest levels available in the game, whereas in Path of Exile, you just need to find any item that can fit into your build. The focus in Path of Exile is predominantly on the theme of the season, or league, and there’s a vast sprawling endgame in the map system.

The different approaches to the end game are stark. The Diablo endgame is very focussed around building very specifically with certain items, while in Path of Exile, the skills and specs of items define it, but those items that can help you can really be anything with good stats.

It’s a vast difference, and in Path of Exile you are reliant on maps dropping, and that’s all RNG. There are a few maps that I’m yet to have drop, but I’ve not successfully navigated my way thoroughly through the atlas. It’s a very interesting system.

The end games are very different. I like both, if I want to play something and just have fun playing I’ll load up Diablo, but if I want to give myself a challenge and try to make progress I’ve never made before I’ll load up Path of Exile. That’s not even mentioning the current end game bosses in Path of Exile, The Shaper, The Elder, Atziri, Uber Atziri, the Breachstone bosses, Aul and more I haven’t encountered. Of those I think I’ve beaten 2, The Shaper and then a Delve boss, not Aul, but another one.

The new league will come out in 2 weeks. I’m excited, but I don’t know how I’m going to approach it. I’ll think about it for next week.

It’s been an odd time the last few days. I’ve been rather up and down. I am currently sitting here like I’ve forgotten to do something but can’t for the life of me remember what it was. And I know that I’ve done everything I wanted to do, and there’s nothing that feels like it’s missing.

I put out a podcast today, and it was just me talking into the mic, doing a little catch up. You can find it here.

I’ve been playing a bit of Path of Exile, I nearly loaded up Destiny, but I gave that up, and I wrote some music. I have made progress on the song I’m working on, but I’m not certain how it’s going. I switched mic and I’m not as keen on the overall sound as I was yesterday, but I can easily change microphones when I next record.

I have not much else to say today, I’m feeling rather scattered. It’s odd. Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

It was Elimination Chamber at the weekend, and it was pretty good. Spoilers ahead.

I’m only going to talk about the Elimination Chamber matches themselves, everything was ancillary to me, and I was disinterested in so many things going in to it. I was only hopeful that the Uso’s would win the tag titles again, and nothing else felt like it had much weight to it. We knew what was going to happen, Finn was going to overcome the odds and win the title, Ronda was never losing to Ruby Riott, and I don’t really care to even remember the other matches. Well, the pre-show match was good with the 205-Live guys.

It was a short PPV in terms of what’s gone on recently, at less than 3 hours 20 minutes I was thankful that I could skip through the interstitials and focus on the matches at hand.

I want to talk about the Mens Elimination Chamber first. It was good. I was excited, I like Daniel Bryan’s eco-warrior persona, it excites me, pair that with his wrestling ability and you’ve got something that has me very interested. Clearly it wasn’t the time for him to lose the belt, but putting him as one of the first pair in the match was a great choice. Especially as the first opponent was Samoa Joe, an absolute behemoth of a wrestler and one of my favourite performers on the main roster today.

I was shocked at a few of the things that went on though. I didn’t understand why there was no interaction between Hardy and Orton, Hardy was eliminated before Orton got into the match, but I can understand that their feud has ended, especially after the hell in a cell match months ago.

I liked the interactions between so many of the participants, and it really highlighted, as everyone is currently pointing out, that Kofi really deserve a much bigger role, potentially even a title at some point. Sure he has crazy amusing spots at the rumble annually, and clearly enjoys what he does, but title-wise he’s not really had much recognition at all.

All in all , the Mens match was great.

The womens tag match was good. I am glad that the outcome that was reached felt right. It was all quite emotional. They did echo the same thing in the Mens match that came later, that the winners were one of the teams that started, and that let it down, especially leading into it all as well.

Anyway, I hope that there is more done and we see more of the IIconics, they’re a class team, and Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville looked very good too. I am happy to see Carmella actually improving, in the last year my opinion of her has risen massively. I think the match was overall structured well, and had some cool things going on. I am very happy for Sasha and Bayley, and was glad to see their recognition. I watched their Takeover match, I’ll comment on it next week, I might watch it again too.

On the whole I really enjoyed the show, but the camera work was crap. Like it cut away to the crowd during a pinfall after one wrestler had done their finisher, it didn’t make sense, and some big moves were missed because they were framed wrong.

It’s been a strange evening. I wanted to get some music written and progress made on my new song, but in an hour and a half I didn’t come up with nearly as much as I’d like to have, and started over 3 times on what I was working on because it wasn’t coming together in any discernible way.

I played some Destiny 2 with the lads and we ran PvP as a squad of 6, and it was a lot of fun. We did eventually get beat, but we’ve had a great run recently. My last 25 games we went 21-4, which is crazy. The more we play, the more we know what we’re doing, and how we all work together. I’m easily the weakest link in the squad, I play far too aggressively and come out with trades more than winning and staying alive. I know I need to play more conservatively, and disengage. I know that is something I need to work on, but I’ve needed to work on it for ages.

I also recorded maybe my shortest podcast yet. I recorded it, then thought I should have recorded something else, but I realise that I’d be taking away from tomorrows journal.

It’s going to be an interesting few days trying to put this music together, I thought I had something a few times, then I just couldn’t translate it to a recording. I think I need to get a lot of layers together, and a decnt chord progression then I’ll be flying, but I’ve got to get to that point.

Yesterday I released a new song! It’s called ‘Am I Awake Yet?’ and I worked with Bandits Azemazer (vocals) and FlaskBear (lyrics).

You can check it out here: https://soundcloud.com/ythafar/am-i-awake-yet

It was a culmination of a few ideas that had been popping around in my head, as well as the first time I tried to properly structure a solo. The theme for the round was multi part songs, and so I tried to get my best prog on for the round, and come up with something that had a definitive theme, and work along that.

I like the majority of the song, I really like how it all goes together, there was a lot of work that went into it, moving things around to make sure it made sense and flowed, hopefully my team mates agreed.

I don’t particularly enjoy the vocals on it, but I know Azemazer usually takes on other roles and vocalists were a bit sparse in the last few rounds. I didn’t provide a particularly great platform on which to work.

I like the solo I put together, however many of the notes have the same meter to them, and I play some of the phrases I most commonly play. All in all though, I’m happy with how it came out.

I’ve just been put into a new team for the new round, 2 weeks to get a song in the round ‘Dreams’ together and complete. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

This weekend has been pretty relaxed! I’ve had a good time, and I’ve had fun. I woke up this morning and no one else was up, so I decided that I would walk the dog to get it done so that everyone else could have a relatively free morning and an extra hour to get ready for the day.

I spent the morning cleaning and sorting out stuff. I managed to consolidate all my posters from their tubes and frames into a single tube, and then I also arranged all my paperwork so I know where I have the things I need. I’m slowly getting less and less stuff in my rooms, and less and less stuff I need to sort out.

I played a lot of Destiny 2 as well, I’ve been hunting down a set of armour and I’m currently just trying to get leg armour, but I’m not finding it, and I’ve tried so many times to get it. I know it’s a little bit of work, but I kind of need them because the next week is a curse week, and getting them will allow me to get one of the final exotic items I need.

I am feeling relaxed, I don’t really know if I’m looking forward to the week ahead, I’m hoping that we hear something about our immigration paperwork, but that’s about it. There isn’t a significant amount of work to be done, though I know that at home I will need to spend time writing music. I have a few ideas, but I know that none of them will suit the next Game of Bands round. I have some other bits of music I need to get recorded now, but I’m focussing on the other things, the ones that are needed for Game of Bands. I have a new track out, I’ll write about it tomorrow.

I have been having some issues with my feet recently due to ill-fitting shoes as I’ve worn them out. I spent this morning travelling to a shop that could perform gait analysis to figure out what kind of running shoe would suit me best.

I found out that I don’t have much deviation in the angle my legs are at so I run pretty neutral, and so I found some trainers that felt like the suited and tried them on. I knew I needed to be very particular about all of this, as I know how good great shoes can make running feel.

I think I still need to let my foot heal a little more, but I’ve been spending my gym time in other ways. The revelation that going to the gym doesn’t mean I have to run was enlightening, and I’ve spent my gym time working on other things, like general strength things, and bigger compound exercises which are a lot of fun, and have more practical applications than isolated exercises.

I’m hoping that the shoes fit me well, and that my running habits can continue, as I know each day I don’t run, I feel myself slipping behind my goal, but I’m confident that I can catch up to where I want to be.

Following on from last week, I feel that I’m neglecting one of the most important differences about these games. The economy of each. Actually, Diablo has very little to write about and the main focus is on Path of Exile, #sorrynotsorry.

While Blizzard tried to monetise Diablo initially with the auction house, the game was revamped, the auction house removed, and the drop system reworked. Many items can be dropped, and the fact that the higher up the difficulty you go, the greater the legendary drop rate increases, so that at the top of the 18 tiers of difficulty, the legendaries are essentially flying at you. This doesn’t really work for a trading system, but it makes the game fun to invest time in, because you know you can get a bunch of different things very quickly. Legendaries and set armours dictate the gameplay, and certain synergies are valuable for position on the leaderboards, but most are relatively easy to obtain within a reasonable amount of hours.

The Path of Exile in game economy relies on person to person trading, drop rates that are rare enough that you will see the rarest item drop once in roughly every 10,000 hours of gameplay. Of course, there are the solo self found and hardcore modes in the game, but these, well the solo self found, don’t have any economy, and the hardcore has a similar, if slightly more expensive economy due to the the risk of death. In Path of Exile the items that have fixed stats and affixes are called Uniques and function like they do in Diablo with one key difference. They don’t dictate a build, very few have builds built around them, and they are drop infrequently at best. While in my time playing Diablo I am pretty certain I’ve had all the Monk unique items, I know there are many Unique items in Path of Exile that I am yet to see. There are even some rare items I’m yet to see.

Uniques do have value, well, some of them do, and in game currency is limited to orbs, their rarity and use dictates the economy and the value of items. Rare items in the game, those rolled well, and with certain modifiers, or a decent base, are more valuable than Uniques in nearly many cases. In the end game, as I’ve mentioned before, there are two warring entities, the Shaper and the Elder, both of which can impart special modifiers onto items, creating them a base for the crafting system, and if they are of high item level they can be very desirable based on the item. This forms a foundation for highly saught after items, and as they’re rare, like very rare, I’m yet to find a decent base item with a high enough item level, and a shaper or elder influence on it, and I’ve played for 400 hours. Maybe a lot of that was inefficient, but rare drops are rare, and I enjoy that about the game.

Item levels are important, as the higher the item level, the higher the tier of modifier that is permissible on the item. For example a life modifier on a low level (level 1 for example) would be Tier 12 or 13, and confer 10-14 life on to the item, however a life modifier on a high level item (level 86 for example) could be Tier 1, and confer 120-129 life on to the item. Thus, a high level item is more desirable than a low level item, as the possibility of rolling that higher tier modifier is higher.

There are two main forms of currency that are frequently traded, Chaos Orbs and Exalted Orbs. Each have their own function, and in the most recent patch we’ve see a significant shift in the economy because of the way they can be used. A Chaos orb has a moderate drop chance, of the time spent playing in end game content, you’d expect to see one every 10-15 minutes I reckon, but an Exalted Orb is typically seen somewhere been 20 to 100 times less. I found my first one before Rachael found her first, then she found 4 in the time it took for me to find my second one.

Chaos Orbs allow you to reroll a rare item, and change the properties of the item. Using these on high level items can get you high tier modifiers, but it could also chose the lower tiers of the modifiers you are after. This then means that you can somewhat craft an item looking for the perks that would benefit you, and they could roll well, and you have a usable item. An Exalted Orb works in a different way. You can have up to 6 modifiers on a rare item, however if you have a slot free, you can add a modifier with an Exalted Orb, and their usefulness cannot be understated, it allows you to add a modifier to an item, and one modifier can make a significant difference to the value of an item. Typically you’d use these on high level, high tier modified weapons to add an additional perk and make a potentially excellent item. Of course, it’s random, so it might not work out how you wanted, but the possibility is there.

There is also crafted modifiers which cost certain amounts of currency. The use of Exalted Orbs because of this crafting has impacted the economy such that the flow of Chaos Orbs is plentiful, and the flow of Exalted Orbs is somewhat restricted. The start of the league 1 Exalted Orb was worth approximately 110 Chaos Orbs, but, with their new use, and their general rarity, the value has gone up massively to approximately 170 Chaos Orbs right now, after hitting a high of 197 Chaos Orbs a few weeks ago.

The Path of Exile economy resets with the season, everything is allowed to have a chance to find it’s place in the new meta, and how useful it is to the current state of the game.This 3 month cycle of season resets allows the economy to reset and keeps it fresh and able to evolve. It also keeps the game interesting, and really enjoyable for me, but I like seeing whats going, and hoping for that valuable drop.

I hope I’ve covered this in enough detail, I kind of jumped around while writing, but I think I’ve covered all I wanted to cover. Thanks for reading!

Last night I had a bad dream. I decided to watch a video before I went to sleep, and it did not do me well. I was pretty disturbed with what I saw, and I’m going to recount it, because I have to get it out of my head. This journal is for me to clear my head. I will not direct you to the video, and if you are easily creeped/grossed/freaked out I’d recommend stopping reading now.

When I was younger I watched the film Perfect Blue, it’s an anime, and it’s rather creepy and strange. I don’t think I fully understood it, and I kind of wanted to watch it again. There was a video that I saw talking about and discussing it, so I thought I’d give it a watch.

The video described how our online presence is an avatar, a perfect picture of ourselves, highly edited, only the best moments selected, and the discussion was fascinating. It really explored the relationship between the person and the avatar and how it all fits together and how Perfect Blue represents the horrific use of social media in the modern day. That’s all great, and the conclusions were outstanding, especially as the film is now 22 years old. It’s mind-blowing how that films message has shifted and can be adapted to everyone now, rather than it’s specific point about celebrities and other famous people and how their lives can be scrutinised.

The disturbing part to me however was the imagery used in one section of the video where the creator was discussing life imitating art, and how one persons project was unearthed. In 1996, while the film was being constructed, a man was obsessed with Bjork, mailed a dangerous package, a sulphuric acid bomb, to her, and was intending to have it detonate in her care, and commit suicide so that the two of them could be together for eternity in the afterlife. While I understood the intention of the story, I was not comfortable and was obviously affected by the use of the footage that was captured by the man on his own, who had sprayed his entire head with acid, and was clearly suffering with horrendous burns. It would have been not long after that clip that he would take his own life, but that short clip of self inflicted harm was incredibly visceral and I was ill-prepared for it.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything like it, whether real, or fictitious in anything I watch, so it’s probably going to be sticking around in my head for a few weeks until I’ve worked through it.

While my awake terror ended there, when sleeping I had a very visceral dream in which there was a really serious car crash, and I was helpless to do anything to help. There was a lot of odd things about the dream, and after waking up at 2 am, I had both things, the dream and the video, swirling around my head, and I could not find sleep at all. I eventually dozed off, but did not wake up well. It’s been a tough day, and I guess I worked through a bit of it with one of the most intense workouts I’ve done in a while.

Have an excellent day, thank you for reading. You’re all my favourites!

And that’s how Walter was introduce to NXT UK. It was a mad night at takeover blackpool, and his first two matches were very different. He had a match against Jack Starz which was just a brutal squash match, then had a decent match against Joe Coffey. The second match really showed him as a dangerous wrestler who could perform well against anyone. I hope that they use him well.

Yesterday I watched Sasha Banks vs Bayley from NXT Takeover Brooklyn, and it was a fascinating match. It started off slow, but really picked up and was incredibly engaging. I knew the outcome of the match, but I was still invested in seeing what was happening and was shocked at the end. It was a very well put together match and a delight to watch.

There's a lot going on at the moment, I’m sure there’s a massive story unfolding in Ronda Rousey vs Becky Lynch, but we need time and space to see what’s going on. There’s not enough known as to what’s going on. I’m hoping that in a complete upset, Ruby Riott wins this weekend, but I don’t expect that to happen, however I don’t know how they’re going to twist everything on the road to Wrestlemania.

I’m getting up to nearly 100km now in my annual goal of covering 1,000km by foot throughout the year, and it’s feeling good. Sure, my foot hurts a little today, but all in all it’s going well.

I’ve been looking at my exercise routine and I’m happy with it, I just need to keep myself active and moving, as well as trying things to challenge myself. I don’t feel like I’m at the level I was at last year with running, I reckon my mile time is about 20 seconds slower right now, but I’m hopeful I can get it back to where it was before.

This week has been rather demanding at work, and the last few days were a stark reminder of how much there is that goes on that I needed to input towards as my replacement was ill. It didn’t help that other members of staff were also not present, but it all was rather chaotic.

I’m ending the week with D&D rather than playing tomorrow night, so I’m hopeful that I can get some stuff done. I want to record some more music, and chill out. No other real plans. I have two ideas I really want to work on. I know that the lads will be playing Destiny 2, so I’ll probably play with them for a while too, we absolutely smashed it today, played 9, won 9 in PvP with them. It was absolutely wild.

I’ve been writing a bunch of music recently. It’s the most productive I’ve been in a long time with music. Game of Bands is a prime reason for this, as it forces me to get music written and completed in roughly a week, so that there is time for lyrics to be written and vocals to be recorded.

I’ve found that while recording, different people I work with have different preferences about the music that they’ll put their lyrics and voices to, which limits the scope of the music I’ve written. The song that’ll be out next week had a few restrictions, there wasn’t allowed to be repeating sections, in terms of your typical song, there won’t be a chorus, or verses with the same structure, so it lead me to develop a coherent song that doesn’t rely on using the same sequences throughout. I enjoyed the challenge and came up with a lot of music, but decided to remove certain sections for other songs as they wouldn’t suit the singer that I’ve got for the round.

I already had an idea before I went into this round about what I was going to record, but I ended up abandoning that idea for game of bands and work on it as a personal project, and I’m looking forward to working on that more, but for now my focus is elsewhere. While recording for this round, the sections I’ve removed I kind of put as a homage to one of my favourite songs, but I can use it as a basis for another song entirely.

I’m reinvigorated to record music right now, and get things made and just have a good time. I played so much yesterday that my fingers were hurt enough by lunch time that I couldn’t really play for the remainder of the day, after spending 45 minutes trying to record a solo. I say trying because I was trying to double track it, but I was also just trying to form it into a structure that I liked. I managed to get it into the correct sequence I wanted, but wasn’t able to get it double tracked, which I might try later in the week, but for now I’m happy with how it is. I added a few flourishes that I just couldn’t pick out to replicate so I didn’t want to double up certain parts and not others.

I’ve really started to understand that simplicity is better for vocals to go over, there’s no point putting something complex and extravagant in where it’s going to get lost in the mix, but there is value in multiple layers that contribute to the sound. I think in the last track I had more tracks than I’ve worked with, but each was contributing to the overall sound, but really had a minimal part to play, but the whole was greater than each of the parts by so much that I started understanding how to construct music.

I spent the morning going through all of my folders, sorting out all of my paperwork, finding my degree transcripts, my bank statements for the last 10 years, my pay slips for the last 15 years, and all the other stuff that has accumulated.

I’m feeling motivated now that the apartment has sold that I can actually get rid of a lot of the paper work that I had sitting around, and I know anything that was important has already been scanned and copied and kept where needed. from 5 folders I have 2 folders left of stuff, and that contains the important stuff, my qualification certificates, and employment details.

It’s refreshing to feel like I’m making progress and I know what needs to be thrown away, what needs to stay. As well as organising stuff yesterday to take over, I’ve further refined what I needed, and it’s all just coming together and I’m feeling good about getting stuff actually done.

I wrote a bunch of music as well, actually I’ll write about that tomorrow, but needless to say, it was a good, productive and creative day.

I started playing a little of Apex Legends, and I’m looking forward to playing more and getting to grips with it. It’s enjoyable and I can sort of understand the hype surrounding it.

The week ahead looks kind of like not much will be going on, it should be relatively quiet, I’m just going to aim to get some running done, and that’s about it.

The last 3 days have been very productive. I did complete on my apartment and sell my car yesterday, as well as close most of the associated accounts. I got my immunisation records in preparation of the medical examination I’ll have in a few weeks, and did some research about what I can do if I’m missing a few. I also got my new driving licence and sent off the old one, it’s illegal to hold two, and so I rectified that accordingly.

Then today I managed to organise a bunch of the boxes of stuff I have so that I can throw stuff away, and give stuff to charity to sell. There are a lot of boxes. I still have a few things to go through, mainly documents, and then can get them scanned in, and chuck them away too.

It’s all feeling pretty good, I feel like a weight has been lifted, but I’m still awaiting more progress on other things. Nothing is final until I’ve gone, so I’m just trying to take everything one day at a time and try to make progress as and when I can. There are many things I have to do, but a lot of them are time sensitive, so I have to wait, even though I know what to do. I know I need 6 passport style photos, but I can’t get them until 2 weeks before I need them, and I don’t know the date I’ll need them. I know I need to get a police certificate, and that it’ll take 10 days to come, but I need to get it within 1 month of the same date I don’t know yet.

I want to try and get everything I own into clear groups of what can stay, what needs to be sold, what needs to be thrown away and what I am going to take with me. I already have a good understanding of the groups, but I need to be putting it into practice sooner and later. The more I do now, the less I have to do in a rush in the future and potentially forget about.

I like ARPGs, actually I think it’s tied to some other things, but it boils down to a few things. The genre tends to be loot filled games with a sprawling endgame, with multiple different viable builds to play, each with distinct and unique characteristics.

Diablo 3 and Path of Exile are examples of this that I have put many hours into. Currently, each of the games are mid-season and I’m enjoying both. They have some similarities, but there are many vast differences that mean the games feel incredibly different. I want to explore why each one shines in each of it’s areas, and try to figure out which one I like better, and which I would recommend for people to play. I will be talking the versions of the game that are current, Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls, currently in Season 16, and Path Of Exile: Betrayal, version 3.5.

First up on the points of things to look at is Story. Every game should have a story, even if it’s told environmentally, and it’s vague, but each of these games has an interesting and unique story. Diablo 3s story spans 5 acts, initially 4, then Reaper of Souls came along and added the fifth, and is very interesting, about Diablo finding a body and overtaking the realm. Of course, I’m grossly simplifying, but there’s a lot of twists and turns, and it’s all rather intriguing, and keeps you hooked the first time you play through.

Path of Exile’s story runs 10 acts, previously was 4, but then the Fall of Oriath happened, and another 6 acts were added. I did not play the game prior to the addition of Fall of Oriath, and as such only know the 10 act game. The story is about the player character being Exiled from Oriath and having to find redemption, only to return to Oriath to uncover that Kitava, a god of corruption, has corrupted the city. There are many other things going on, there’s artifacts to find to go through the story, and in a mission in act 2, you make a choice in the quest that will determine your rewards which can affect the rest of the game, from a mechanics point of view, rather than story.

Gameplay between the two is based around the same inputs, mouse and keyboard, isometric like view. Diablo 3 allows you to have 6 skill available at any one time, while Path of Exile allows 8 skills, but, also allows a second weapon set, which is switch able, and can have a different 8 skills assigned. This becomes useful as there is a quick switch, so you can easily switch between a general enemies and movement set up and a boss killing set up within a press of a button.

There are 7 character classes in each game, but they influence each game in dramatically different ways. In Diablo 3, choosing a wizard ties you into using their spells and skills, while choosing a Witch in Path of Exile means only that you start at a certain point on the Passive Skill Tree which is weighted towards spell casting and intelligence.

Both games share Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence as points that can be added, where in Diablo they are important for Skill Damage, in Path of Exile they are used for item and skill requirements as well as increasing Health, Mana and Evasion, among other things.

As we get to this point we can see that mechanically the games start separating, and the remainder of what I write will try to keep them separate but compare where necessary. Those differences and things will be covered over the next few weeks!

It’s been a crazy week! Tomorrow my apartment completes and I am also selling my car. It’s going to be a busy day, but I’m looking forward to it. I’ve already started putting a bunch of things together, and getting prepared. Most of my accounts are ready to be closed, and addresses moved. It’s been a long time coming, it’s all been going on for 10 and a half months now, so I’m glad to be done with it.

I put out a podcast catching up with where my apartment stuff is at and where my immigration stuff is at, as well as a few other things. You can check it out here! Unfortunately the video didn’t get tweeted out automatically, as that’s a change that youtube made last week, which for me is a bit disappointing, but now that I’ve read some information behind it it makes sense.

I got a hair cut today, I like how it looks now, but I was enjoying the length it was at, even if it looked a bit of a mess near my ears. I’m going to have to find a new hairdressers… That thought has occurred to me a few times, but it’s really dawning on me now.

After last weekends craziness with the Royal Rumble, some interesting thoughts popped out. What match ups look like they could be wonderful having seen a lot of wrestlers facing one another even for a brief time.

Didn’t Lacey Evans just not look very good? And she’s been called up to the main roster. A travesty I know given her shaky start, but never fear, she looked like she hit her stride later in the match, especially when she stood up to Charlotte. I know, I know, I am very down on Charlotte, I just don’t like her, but, seeing the two of them working together, and Charlotte’s ability to carry Lacey means that I hope they get paired together soon, as it’ll benefit a new face, and hopefully get Lacey Evans involved now that she’s around.

At the time it looked like it could have very interesting implications, but Aleister Blacks elimination of Dean Ambrose was excellent. It’s a shame that Dean is going away, but I’d still like to see Aleister Black in that realm. I’d like to see him against someone like Finn Balor, can you imagine The Demon being vanquished by Aleister Black, and then them becoming a mighty tag team where he can evoke The Demon. Just ponder it?

What about Riott Squad vs Kairi Sane, Io Sharai and Dakota Kai? That intrigues me, 3 vs 3, 2 solid teams, could be very entertaining. I don’t have much else to say about it other than, I think it’d be good.

Rhea Ripley has been tearing it up, and despite her tough character, she’s one of the most interesting people to see on the performance center channel, and her speech after winning the NXT UK Womens championship was wonderful. I don’t know if that speech actually exists anywhere, but it was great being in the live audience for it. Anyway, I’d enjoy seeing her against anyone on the main roster, and she’s only 23, and is excellent. A match or series of matches against Bayley or Sasha Banks, or Charlotte, or Becky Lynch… or anyone on the main roster, within reason could be fantastic.

Okay, Seth Rollins vs Lesnar at Wrestlemania will be the match that we’re getting, but what about Johnny Wrestling/Gargano vs Seth Rollins? If they could play the story right it could be one of the best feuds, some of the best matches in a long time, but we are still mid-story with Gargano and Ciampa. Who knows where that will lead?

Andrade vs Mustafa Ali could start any moment, but with Andrade performing incredibly against Rey Mysterio at the moment, this one can wait. Tranquilo I guess I’ll have to be, but in what are some of the best televised matches, and Mustafa Ali’s feud with Samoa Joe, I think there could be some solid matches coming up, and switching these opponents around could be an utter delight.

That being said, Samoa Joe vs anyone he hasn’t feuded with yet. I just feel like he’s not getting the matches we all know he can deliver, but just mix it around, I’m hoping for some good and interesting matches, it doesn’t matter if they’re one offs or not, he’s a great wrestler and can elevate anyone. He’s really someone that can lose repeatedly but not really have any think be knocked off of his persona.

That’s about it for now, have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

I’ve done some running and some walking, and today I did some barbell back squats for the first time in a long time.

In my ever continuing quest to be the best me I can be, I have been running a lot. My mile time is back down under 6 minutes 30, my 2 km time is under 8 minutes, my 5km time is reliably under 25 minutes, and my 10km time is edging ever closer to the 50 minute mark I’m aiming for.

Once I was done with todays 5km, I decided, as no one was using it, to try and see if I could remember how to squat. I learned a few things. Firstly, start with a low weight to make sure you know the movement. I started with 20kg, which was good, and I felt like I got into a good rhythm. Secondly, slowly ramp up the weight to what you know you can manage. I started at 20 to get the movement going, I’ve been doing jumps with a 15kg sand bag, so I know 20 is going to feel like not a lot for me. I stepped up to 40kg, which I was certain I could handle, I’ve deadlifted it a few times over the past 2 weeks, and it was fine. I then stepped up to 50kg, and I wasn’t expecting to find a stopping point for the day.

As I lifted the 50kg bar off the rack and tried to get myself into motion I noticed that I needed to make sure everything was in the right position, my right foot wasn’t where it was on my earlier squats, so I needed to adjust. I went through the movement and got a few reps done before returning the bar and calling it a day. I’m sure the ramp up to that weight didn’t help my fatigue going in but I am glad I didn’t try to jump to 60kg immediately, as I know that would have ended in disaster. I’m also pretty confident in saying that the 5 km that I started with didn’t positively contribute to the maximum weight I could lift too.

My third point then is to know when to stop, where your limits are, the information I shared the other day about going 70% every day rather than having to take days off after going 100% sprang to mind, and I’m trying to get into that habit, of pushing myself to where I know I can get, and ensuring I don’t overexercise and am left fatigued for days.

Sure I’d like to be able to squat more, but that’ll come in time, so for now I’m just going to work on increasing the amount of reps of 50kg that I can do, and maybe try out a 60kg or so when I’ve done a sensible, not over the top, warm up.

Aside from releasing a new song yesterday, I have been curious about when Within Temptation went the direction of Pvris and Tonight Alive.

I was listening to the new Within Temptation album, Resist, earlier today and was thoroughly confused. It doesn’t sound like The Silent Force, which is my favourite of their albums. They’ve moved to a more electronic sound and definitely shifted a little from what I remember.

Don’t mistake my thoughts on this album, I like it, but it’s not what I was expecting. I like Pvris and Tonight Alive, but I expected Within Temptation to be massively symphonic, soaringly high, and have some crazy contrast between the music and the lyrics. That unfortunately feels missing, however what is left is a very cohesive collection of tracks that are good songs, if missing a little of what made the band special.

I’m sure their sound has naturally evolved here over their few albums released in between, The Silent Force did come out in 2004 after all, and here we are 15 years later. 22 Years after their debut album was released also, they’re still breaking new ground, and putting out quality music. It’s been a wild ride, and I know that there are certainly some heavier guitar led tracks on Hydra, their previously released album, especially the track with Howard Jones, Dangerous.

The aesthetic of the band has changed too, maybe for the better, maybe not, but it’s certainly not what it was before, with the grandiose dresses and gothic visuals. That appealed to me when I was younger, but I’m rather over the looks of a band, as long as the music entertains, I’m far more hooked.

It’s been a strange revelation. Thanks for reading! You’re all my favourites! Have an excellent day!

I’ve finished a song! Along with 2 people from Game of Bands we came up with this song called Link’s Awakening! Check it out! It’s a clicky link!

I’ve been working on it for the last 2 weeks, and it’s got a few Zelda references in the music, and the lyricist put some lyrics together for it. They suggested the Zelda theme, and I adapted accordingly. I’m happy with how it’s turned out, and I’m looking forward to writing more. The general theme of the round was video games, retro games, and we rose to the challenge.

As for what else is going on, Rachyrock and I started watching the Grand Tour, and the first episode was a lot of fun, I enjoyed it, and then we also watched a few Marble Race videos, which were a lot of fun, you might have seen it pop up recently, no idea why it popped up, but one of the videos went kind of viral and has significantly more views than all their other videos.

It’s been a good relaxing weekend. I’m looking forward to hitting the gym tomorrow morning, and getting this crazy week ahead off to a flying start.